KARACHI, April 2: The Karachi Electric Supply Corporation will restructure the 16 zones in the city within a year in such a way that all facilities — such as lodging of complaints, rectification of bills, applications for new connections, etc — would be available at all power utility centres.

This was stated by the KESC managing director, Brig Tariq Saddozai, while speaking to newsmen at a ceremony on Wednesday morning held to inaugurate the one-window KESC customer service centre.

“The power utility has already restructured two customer service centres. The first one in Defence and the other one is being opened today. In May a customer service centre in Gulshan-i-Iqbal will be opened, in Saddar in June and so on and so forth.”

The KESC managing director said that the reason why the power utility was concentrating on so-called posh localities was that they were a good source of revenue. “But after this phase, the power utility will move to all the zones of the city,” he said.

“Apart from the facilities of complaints’ redressal, maintenance, new connections, billing, meter change, faults, replacement of pole-mounted transformers, the customer services centres in Clifton and Defence will also offer a 24- hour facility of payment through an easy-payment machine and Internet facility for payment of energy bill,” he explained.

The KESC managing director said under the new connection policy a consumer would be given a connection by the KESC within seven days. “A consumer would have to submit only three documents — the photocopy of his national identity card, documents showing the possession of his house, and the house map — along with the application form. The KESC has dropped the idea of asking for approved building plans, because they are hard to come by. In case of Kutchi abadis, a consumer would have to submit a certificate signed by the Nazim of his area showing that he owns the house for which he has applied for a power connection. However, the consumer would be obligated not to insist on the possession of his house on the strength of the power connection.”

The KESC managing director explained that the officials of the power utility would survey the site within three days of the submission of the application form. “If they detect no violation of rules, they would issue an estimate — amount required to install the power connection at the consumer’s house — within two days. The connection would be issued within seven days of the submission of the test form.”

Mr Saddozai said that domestic consumers who needed less than 50 kilowatts of electricity would be able to avail themselves of this policy. He added that commercial consumers who needed less than five kilowatts of electricity would obtain a connection under this policy.

He said there was a power shortage of about 400 megawatts which was met by the supply from Wapda. “The KESC has signed an agreement with Wapda under which the power utility receives 400 megawatts on a daily basis. Similarly, a Hubco-KESC link will also come into operation soon which would enable the power utility to meet the electricity shortage.”

He said that of the total of 827 feeders in the city at least five supplied power to those areas where from 81 per cent to 100 per cent consumers pilfered power. Similarly, he added, at least 61 feeders supplied power to those areas where 61 per cent to 80 per cent consumers pilfered power.

The federal minister of state for water and power, Mir Khalid Ahmad Khan Lund, also spoke on the occasion.